US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
theguardian.com190 points by tosh 5 hours ago
190 points by tosh 5 hours ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960084 (277 comments)
Wikipedia says: "in the United States, infections occasionally occur in rural areas, where the bacteria are believed to circulate among rodents." A few years ago a boy in Russia contracted the plague after interacting with a wild marmot, he was treated successfully without any problems. I think this news is overblown, because everyone immediately pictures 14th century Europe
You should read up on the long history of Russian Biological War programs. Fascinating stuff. They came up with some insane versions of plague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog...
In a similar vein, I highly recommend Annie Jacobsen's recent book, Biological War: A scenario. It dives into the Soviet/Russian biological weapons programs and discusses facilities such as the Vector Institute (State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology) located in Koltsovo, Siberia. Interestingly enough, the scenario follows a lab leak of weaponized plague at this research facility... having read the book it was rather shocking to see this headline.
She was interviewed on Breaking Points today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvVRnh3JVGQ&list=PLdOud06Yw7...
The algorithm giveth, and the algorithm keepeth away.
Before I clicked that link I had never heard of Breaking Points, a political series with over 2MM subscribers. I'm a YT premium subscriber and watch a ton of political stuff, much of it damn similar to what that channel produces.
I took the time to share it because I like the show and they often report on subjects that cause them to be demonetized or hidden by the algorithm.
I also watched a lot of news content and never saw them until seeking them out. I suspect they are suppressed by the algorithm because they are generally willing to give voice to anti-establishment, anti-oligrachy sentiments (both from the hosts and guests). But yea they're great. The primary hosts are explicitly left and right leaning but rarely get caught up in partisan discord and instead focus on high quality, fact based journalism. (Relatedly, the one topic that does most often trigger the occasional bouts of partisan bickering between Saagar and Krystal is COVID and Dr. Fauci, make of that what you will).
Funnily enough the reason why virology therapy (something the Soviets did a lot of research in cuz they didn't have good antibiotics and biotech/pharma) hasn't seen much success at scale is precisely because the body's immune system adapts too quickly. Maybe we will see more success now with AI but it will be a cold day in hell before the powers that be let any garage biohacker have access to LLMs trained on this sort of information.
I saw a post about this on Reddit this morning. Haven't looked into it further, but people were claiming that there are versions of this plague that have been modified to release other toxins. It's effectively a bioweapon: they cure you for the plague, which kills you with the poison it contained.
There are some that had been modified to release endorphins!
>"When we first heard Soviet scientists were inserting the endorphin gene [for euphoria] into plague," says Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army bacteriologist, "we were appalled. That they would purposefully engineer the Y. pestis bacteria to behave this way... to make you want to go out and socialize... this was some horrifying stuff."
> . . .
> Former assistant secretary of defense Andy Weber agrees. "I grew up thinking Reagan’s phrase ‘Evil Empire’ was an exaggeration," he tells us. "Then I learned what the Russians were doing [with biological warfare]." He pauses for effect. "It was evil."
The accounts are from Annie Jacobsen's notes in "Biological War".
Endorphins make you happy as you are. Endorphins have sedative effect. Morphine is a similar substance and it is a sedative, all opioids are.
What makes one socialize is dopamine [1]: "Hypomania, manifesting with feelings of euphoria, omnipotence, or grandiosity are prone to appear in those moments when medication (dopaminergic medication - thesz) effects are at their maximum."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_dysregulation_syndrom...
This dopamine dysregulation occurs naturally in people with toxoplasmosis.
This kind of mistake - mistaking dopamine and endorphine, - strongly suggests a fake. I know of one such fake from the former employee of my friend, you can read his account here [2]. My friend was a lead of the "secret" laboratory (next to Kitay Gorod metro station in the center of Moscow, in an institute that needed no documents to enter) that researched how "psychics" and "healers" achieve their results.
[2] https://lit.lib.ru/t/torin_a/text_0100.shtml (it is in Russian, but language is not a barrier at all nowadays)
The laboratory researched what these "extrasensing people" do and found nothing - given very little training an ordinary men can do the same and even better. At the end of USSR, there was a string of visitors from USA there in the lab, and one of those visitors successfully persuaded US government to open similar research program, according to [2].
The fearmongering of "endorphin-producing bugs that make one socialize and spread" looks like, well, fearmongering to obtain funds for Big Pharma's government contracts, etc. It messes up two very different neurotransmitters, a mistake that real scientist would not make.
Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source. (Having said that, bacteria upregulate selected interleukins to reduce inflammation, so maybe this is a game of telephone based on some actual Soviet effort to increase virulence, just not "euphoria.")
I believe the same thing is also described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohazard_(book)
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets, so I'd like to see a reputable source.
Where was this claimed? Do we have any definitive confirmation of the Roswell incident anyway?
She put it in her book on Area 51, apparently, and had one source for the claim, no other evidence.
What was the context though? Did she asset that it was factually true or was she merely quoting someone who suggested the possibility?
This is so ridiculous that I had to check. The book is Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. This unflattering contemporary review, retrieved from the Wayback Machine, has an excerpt:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110713153629/https://www.washi...
The engineers were told that the children were rumored to have been kidnapped by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi madman who, at Auschwitz and elsewhere, was known to have performed unspeakable experimental surgical procedures mostly on children, dwarfs, and twins. The engineers learned that just before the war ended, Josef Mengele made a deal with Stalin. Stalin offered Mengele an opportunity to continue work in eugenics. . . . in secret, in the Soviet Union.
Mengele held up his side of the Faustian bargain and provided Stalin with the child-size crew. . . .
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets
And people take her seriously?
[flagged]
Those two things are not alike, and the claim about Wikipedia is a blatant lie ... certainly it is vastly more reliable than you are. Other comments from you:
> there is a gatekeeping cretin in his basement hitting refresh to make sure he controls the world's definition for egg salad.
> Wikipedia is filled with ministers of truth.
Permanently muted and dismissed.
Regarding Reddit, there is a lining of truth behind his claim (despite possibly being a troll based on account age). Someone years ago made a well written post about it on reddit (yes I know, kind of ironic)
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
Also discussed on HN 5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274
Things have certainly changed since the introduction of AI, but I still believe the status quo is mostly the same regarding people who create content or write content and people who passively consume it.
> Regarding Reddit, there is a lining of truth behind his claim
Um, what part of "Those two things are not alike" don't you understand?
Yep. And this is a lab that was reportedly doing gain-of-function research.
Indeed. I wonder how much work it would be to make this antibiotic resistant. Then the Russians develop some bacteriophage that infects and kills the bacteria as their own cure.
Making it antibiotic resistant is not difficult and they already did that back when they were the USSR. Not only did they develop it, they produced large quantities of it to stockpile for a rainy day.
The phrase "gain-of-function research" has acquired almost magical properties on the Internet. You can do literally anything you want to a pathogen with it.
Purposely giving a pathogen increased infection abilities and more lethality, and expecting to be able to contain it in a lab has proven to be wishful thinking time and again.
People just dramatically updated their priors since Covid. We went from pandemics are a problem of previous centuries to any new outbreak might be a pandemic.
The world is far more connected logistically before. Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it. So, the priors-updating was probably both overdue, but maybe also overblown.
> Yes, we have modern medicine, but many people reject it
Yea you are definitely right about that. In Africa (specific countries I can’t currently recall) attempts at vaccination programs for example are often met with hostility or suspicion or even some people believing a vaccine causes the disease.
There was also vaccine skepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries like China which refused first-to-market western vaccines out of fear and suspicion. It’s tragic all around.
To be fair, in Europe, we largely rejected the russian COVID vaccine. In theory we had good reasons, the vaccine was a bit shady, but I always wondered how much geopolitics played the role and how much it was really the problem with russian manufacturing standards.
> In Africa
In the USA too. Just look at all the nonsense around the MMR vaccine in Trump's orbit and what's happened to the CDC and FDA under RFK's leadership
Sure but the point is to focus on other countries/continents/peoples and their vaccine skepticism because that’s more interesting and less talked about.
In Pakistan, antivax opposition is in no small part to blame on the CIA abusing "vaccinations" to uncover bin Laden's hideout [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034631928/the-cias-hunt-for-...
Maybe Pakistan shouldn’t have been harboring Bin Laden and whatever ill effects happened here are the fault of Pakistan. Not my problem - Pakistan’s government and people needed to do better and whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences.
Also stop trying to deprive other people and governments of their agency just because it fits a convenient western superiority complex you have. They’re not stupid.
> whatever the human cost there was it was worth it to get Bin Laden. Actions have consequences
blaming the ~260M citizens for the actions of Pakistani government is repulsive.
Blaming the 340 million citizens of the US for Trump’s actions is repulsive too, but plenty of people enjoy doing that on the Internet.
Sorry. People are responsible for the governments they have. Everyone is, or nobody is.
Those 260 million Pakistanis can educate themselves on vaccines and make informed decisions. Vaccine denial in the US? Same thing. You can’t say Americans are responsible for anti-vax sentiments, for example, and then say other people around the world aren’t.
Or are Americans smarter and better than everyone else and so they’re more responsible? I’ll happily take you admitting we’re the best if you want to go that route.
You know, even being about to talk this much about your own government or foreign governments takes a certain level of privilege. At least 1/5th of Pakistan is in poverty.